OTTUMWA, IOWA -- For Thursday’s Facebook Story of the Day, fans wanted to know; how are the water levels holding up with the current drought conditions?
In Ottumwa, the Des Moines River is at a low level, but that level is depended upon how much water the Army Corps of Engineers releases from Red Rock Lake. Currently, because of the dry weather, the Corps is releasing less water and is scheduled to cut back even more in the next couple of days.
However, even with the water level being low on the Des Moines River, Ottumwa has an adequate water supply.
“We encourage people to conserve water and not to waste water. At this time, we do have an adequate water supply. Although, we are producing quite a big of water each day. We are producing 10.5 million gallons of water per day and that is actually over our rated capacity of 8 million gallons per day. But, we do have the ability to produce as much as 12 million gallons per day on the short term basis,” said Mike Heffernan with Ottumwa Water Work and Hydro.
Heffernan says that the Corps has a procedure that they follow during drought conditions, but he did agree that a good soaking of rain would help ease the current situation.
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